I Watch Films: Grosse Point Blank

 

Grosse Point Blank

Martin Blank (John Cusack) is a hitman; he stops an assassination by shooting a bike courier hitman but Grocer (Dan Akroyd) another hitman has taken the place of the doorman and kills the target. Later he confronts Blank, suggesting Blank join the union he’s forming to avoid these kinds of things and prevent them undercutting each other. Blank turns him down.

Blank’s been on the phone with his assistant Marcella (Joan Cusack, John’s sister) who informs him of his ten year high school reunion. Blank doesn’t want to go, consults his therapist, who he coerces with violence, still doesn’t want to go. When a job goes wrong and he has to shoot a target who is supposed to look like they died of natural causes, the client asks for a federal witness to be killed in Detroit this weekend as compensation. The high school reunion is in Grosse Point, a Detroit suburb, also that weekend.

In Grosse Point his house has been turned into a convenience store, his mother is in a home suffering from dementia. He meets some old school friends, jokingly telling them he’s a hitman. One of them is Debi (Minnie Driver) now a local radio DJ, who he abandoned on prom night, vanishing from then to now. He briefly explains that he left to join the army.

A hitman tries to kill Blank, two NSA agents are following him. Grocer turns up, tries to get him to join the union. Blank accuses him of setting the NSA agents on him. He then decides to go to the reunion, and Debi agrees to go with him, still not knowing he’s actually a hitman.

It’s a comedy, about going home and about killing people. Does it still stand up? It’s about nostalgia, and unintentionally the 90s technology made the modernity seem old-fashioned! Blank plugs his big mobile phone into his portable computer! In all, not much more than the sum of it’s parts, but they are good parts.

Watch This: Fun film about meeting your lost love, also killing people
Don’t Watch This: Guy would rather join the army then become an assassin than take his girlfriend to prom